The demand for electrical energy in the contiguous US was 746,470 MegaWatts in 2005. Most of the energy was produced by coal (49.7%), nuclear energy (19.3%), and natural gas (18.7%). Unfortunately, transmission of energy from the point of generation to the point of retail sale remains highly inefficient. Energy losses of between 5-8% in 2005 translate to nearly twenty billion ($20,000,000,000) Dollars in lost revenues. Nearly all the energy produced passes through high voltage power lines which is then delivered to cities, businesses, and residential areas after being stepped down to lower voltages.
All high voltage power lines use insulated copper wiring due to its relatively cheap cost and electrical resistivity of 17.2×10−5 Ωm, which is good for metals. While these cables allow over 700,000 volt electricity transmission, power lines using copper have serious shortcomings and limitations due to mechanical and electrical constraints of hanging wires. For instance, transmission of electricity through copper cables is incredibly inefficient, with a tremendous amount of energy lost in the form of heat created by resistance of electricity passing through the cable. Moreover, the heat generated can cause deformation and failure of the transmission lines, particularly if they are too long. Other problems include costly rights of way which must be obtained to ensure use of the land for towers which, like the cables suspended therefrom, present aesthetic drawbacks.
Underground cables have several advantages over suspended power cables including longer transmission distances, higher electric loads, reduced right of way property costs and no aesthetic disturbance. Buried copper lines also support minimal weight and have better dielectric insulative coatings which reduce dielectric losses of electricity as compared with hanging lines. However, efficiency loss resulting from resistance is still a major problem. Cryogenic cables are a second underground transmission line option, but require liquid nitrogen stations to remain cooled in conjunction with the other costs. Superconductor power transmission lines are an attractive solution because they would exhibit zero loss due to no electrical resistivity, however processing of the single crystal material into wires of any useful length remains impracticable if not impossible.
Clearly there exists a longstanding need for a more efficient means of transmitting energy over long distances. In order to meet the need in the art, a method and apparatus for power transmission through a confined plasma subjected to a magnetic and/or electromagnetic field is provided.
It is known that glass tubes with electrodes at each end and filled with a noble gas can transmit electricity. These gas tubes are similar to neon tubes when an external electric field is applied. Plasma forms inside the tube under an alternating current electric field of high voltage which ionizes the gas or a portion thereof. Electrons become freed from the parent gas molecules and electrical conductivity is increased relative to that of the gas before the applied electric field. These electrons behave similar to the free electrons in a metal such as copper.
Even a partially ionized gas in which as little as 1% of the particles are ionized can have the characteristics of a plasma (i.e. response to magnetic fields and high electrical conductivity). The term “plasma density” usually refers to the “electron density”, that is, the number of free electrons per unit volume. The degree of ionization of a plasma is the proportion of atoms which have lost (or gained) electrons, and is controlled mostly by the temperature. A plasma is sometimes referred to as being “hot” if it is nearly fully ionized, or “cold” if only a small fraction (for example 1%) of the gas molecules are ionized. “Technological plasmas” are usually cold in this sense. Even in a “cold” plasma the electron temperature is still typically several thousand degrees Celsius.
The electrical conductivity of plasmas is related to its density. More specifically, in a partially ionized plasma, the electrical conductivity is proportional to the electron density and inversely proportional to the neutral gas density. Put another way, any portion of the gas medium that is not ionized, of that exists by virtue of recombination of its charged particles, will continue to act as an insulator, creating resistance to the transmission of electricity therethrough. The subject invention exploits a plasma's responsiveness to magnetic fields (as well as that of the paramagnetic gas medium) to substantially or entirely obviate this resistance during energy transmission in a manner more fully described herein. Accordingly, the transmission efficiency will be substantially independent of distance but rather a function of 1) ionization 2) vacuum quality 3) magnetic field stratification. Ionization would be optimum photo-electric ionization maintained by UV light saturation; vacuum quality would be high to extremely high, with the determining factor being the MFP (mean free path) of the non-ionized molecules present; magnetic field stratification would be the effect of the static magnetic field to regionalize the non-participating molecules and particles within the chamber.